Sam Wollaston

Jonathan Creek review

Someone in the new Jonathan Creek has Sherlock delusions of grandeur - but it's not Alan Davies.

Doll & Em (Sky Living) is an interesting one, semi-improvised comedy written by and starring real-life bezzies Dolly Wells and Emily Mortimer, who play versions of themselves. I don't know how far they've distorted themselves. I think - I hope - a lot because they're a bit ghastly; at times it's like eavesdropping on a pair of self-obsessed luvvie types in a Notting Hill restaurant. Except we're in LA so make that Beverly Hills (Doll is working as her actor friend's assistant after a messy breakup).

It's not lol-a-minute, it's in-jokey and in-crowdy (there are appearances by celebrity pals). It's self-indulgent. But self-aware too. And at its heart is an interesting and genuinely touching examination of friendship - the goods, the bads, the power imbalances, the cruelty, the games, the tears, the love - made all the more poignant by their friendship for real.

Oh, and it's good on the paranoid ridiculousness of Hollywood too. What is anyone REALLY THINKING? Plus I took a sneaky peak at the second one too, which is better. See, even though I was a bit annoyed, and I didn't feel it had much to do with me, I still wanted more. That's a good sign.

Blandings review

Timothy Spall makes a brilliant and utterly convincing crumbling aristocrat.

Pete (Hugh Dennis) is in helpline hell. He's got a bill in his handthat he can't pay because it's for £0.00. The person on the other end of the line is insisting he has to pay it though, because the computer says so. I don't think they would do that. You can't pay £0.00. I've just tried, and my computer says it has to be a sum between £0.01 and £99,999.99.

There are other things in this first episode of Outnumbered (BBC One) that don't ring true to me. Such as Frank Pringle's son having been offered drugs at school by his RE teacher (trying to be a bit edgy there, is it, a bit Bad Education?). Or the email firestorm that goes pinging off at quarter past midnight from the parents of Karen's classmates. Wouldn't happen.

What does it matter? Well, maybe it doesn't. It certainly wouldn't matter if Outnumbered was wildly imaginative or anarchic or surreal or anything like that (if only!). But my (admittedly unscientific) research suggests the people who like Outnumbered are the sort of smug metropolitan middle-class Farrow & Ball families who watch it and go: "Look, it's us, our Caspar slams the door too, hahaha!" I think that's what it's trying to do, it's about recognition. So it should ring true.

I'm not a fan, can you tell? If I wanted to watch families like this I could just go round and watch them, in the flesh. I do, in fact; they're my friends, my own family too if I'm honest. But I like my friends and family more than I like the Brockmans. I have to.

I really don't like the Brockmans. Pete and Sue (Claire Skinner - brilliant actor but not brilliant comic actor) are moany, bickery ditherers, constantly worrying about their dull mediocre problems. The children are simply horrid. Actually, they're hardly children any more; suddenly they're enormous, but that doesn't make them any better, just enormously horrid. Giant parasite children feeding off their own pathetic parents.

It would be OK if they were amusingly or at least entertainingly awful. But they're not, they're tiresome. As are their problems - the usual school issues, a frowned-on tattoo, a lost hamster. Perhaps the hamster is lost inside Pete, a sex game gone wrong? No such luck I'm afraid, that would be way too much fun. The hamster may be under the floorboards, it's probably just gone.

Uncle on BBC Three (you pretty much have to go beyond two for a BBC laugh now, House of Fools being the exception). Uncle also celebrates generational differences and misunderstandings, but much more joyously. The uncle (played by Nick Helm) is disastrous but weirdly likable; the kid is nerdy and lovely. They have adventures, it's more outrageous, bolder, more inappropriate, darker, quirkier (there's singing). And - crucially - funny. Which Outnumbered isn't. Maybe once I chuckled to myself, when Pete and his elder son were accusing each other of being racist. That's it, though. And yet it's adored by literally every other critic and it's won a ton of awards. They're wrong though and I'm right.

Room 101 - TV review

I like Richard Osman (massive fan of Pointless), but I very much disagree with his views, on Room 101 (BBC One), about "zoo filler".

Two Doors Down (BBC One) brings New Year to Scotland. Hogmanay then. The Bairds, Eric and Beth, are having a few people over: son Ian, Ian's partner Tony, not-gay darling soldier son Angus (though he hasn't arrived yet), Beth's man-eating sister Caroline. Plus a few people from the neighbourhood - a dull aspirational (snobby) couple, a pair of Norwegians, a few teenagers.

There's something of the feel of a Radio 4 play transferred to television about it. And at times it follows a path too obvious. So gay Tony asks for pear cider, which obviously Eric doesn't have. And the Norwegian woman is earnest and worthy and has a moan to Beth that she's not doing her recycling right. And all the Scots drink a lot and don't really know anything about Norway, like where it is or how it's different from Sweden.

But there are some cracking performances - from Arabella Weir, Alex Norton, Daniela Nardini (Caroline, of course) and more. And some lovely observations. Anyone with a family, or neighbours, will recognise just about everyone here. I especially like Colin (Jonathan Watson), the tedious know-it-all who knows it all about cars and malt whisky and everything else as well as the best way to get from A to B on the A this or the B that or whatever. There's a Colin in everyone's lives, and most people's Christmases or New Years, no?

As the evening goes on, and the booze goes down, guards fall away, old prejudices and secrets, truths and bitternesses start to creep out. Tomorrow's steak pie is eaten today, and the gazebo is trashed. By the time the bells go, and Angus eventually shows up, it's a glorious hell. At least as ghastly as it was 500 years ago. Happy new year.

Backchat with Jack Whitehall and His Dad - TV review

Jack Whitehall's dad adds a touching new spin to the chatshow.

The Revolution Will Be Televised - TV review

Jolyon and Heydon even play a prank on David Cameron - what chutzpah!

In the latest series of Fresh Meat, Kingsley (Joe Thomas) says that whole weird thing, him and Josie, is "over like Dover". Actually, Josie has transferred to Southampton, but she's still a permanent presence in the Manchester student house via Skype on an iPad. And later they go down there, for a traffic light party.

There's seamen aplenty too - without the "a", I'm afraid. "I've got a sex engine and it runs on cum," says red-trousered JP (Jack Whitehall), all in a froth about the new batch of hotties. Since starting his TV acting career in Fresh Meat, he has pretty much become Mr Right Now. Quite rightly - he's hilarious.

It's sticky and smelly, spunky and puerile. There's not much in the way of story, so it has no right to work over an hour. But it does, somehow. Well, I do know how: by being very funny about the funniest - and most tragic - time (it also rings a bit true, amazingly). I think I can actually feel what a good time Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain had creating it. I know I'm having a good time watching.